first principles
noun1
The set of basic statements on which a method, theory, or organisation is founded.
- The rules and regulations don't answer the question. First principles are required.
- This book is aimed at any interested intelligent person, typically one with little background in syntax research. This is intended as a primer for smart people, possibly from other fields, who may be interested in human language and don’t know much about its structure. You may have heard that sentences are tree-structures: What does that even mean? Here, I break it down and explain it from first principles, in what I hope is an accessible way.2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Introduction” (chapter 1), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, pages 18–19:
1 more example
- Mountainhead plays out less like a drama between four tenuously connected, very rich friends, and more like a random word generator of tech and finance bro jargon – decel (deceleration, as in AI), p(doom) (the probability of an AI apocalypse), first principles.[2025 June 2, Adrian Horton, “Tech-bro satire Mountainhead is an insufferable disappointment”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 18 Jul 2025:
- Related terms
- axiom